Hi Shelley, I couldn't agree with you more. The odd thing is if you look at the description of RAD you will find it is the exact list of symptoms used for defining a Psychpath.

I also agree on this parent blame game. I think from what a parent said a long time ago that in looking back she felt that she in turn rejected the child because the child was doing the rejecting.

Many, many people are raised in less than desirable environments and certainly don't turn out to be Psychopaths. I think and I am not any kind of authority but it seems like the blame the parent situation is way off base. If you read at the RAD forum, which I do, the similarities of these kids match up perfectly. Most of the people there are foster and grandparents. Their general theory is enough love will change these kids. This is only my opinion but my view is they are only ensuring that they will end up with a very well socialized Psychopath. If you have a kid and the best recommendation is to put alarms on their doors to protect everyone else in the house you have a much bigger problem than just a kid who needs more love, in my opinon.

If I were to take a guess it seems like RAD is just a "diagnosis" of a Fledgling Psychopath. I find this entire area of discussion very interesting.

I'd agree that RAD seems to work best as a description of the fledgling psychopath, and I do understand the problem with labelling kids early on. However, I really hate to see people promoting the idea that with enough love, you can fix these people. I just don't beleive that to be the case and while I agree that loving them more might teach them to be "better" psychopaths, I think some of the greatest damage is done to the family, who come to believe that everything that the psychopath is and does is all their fault for not loving them enough.

It sets the family up for years and years of guilt and a ton of abuse at the hands of the psychopath. The parents/family hang in there, take the abuse, fight desperately for the lost family member, and do so because at some level, they accept the blame for the outcome. (I think If you look carefully, you can see many of these people in here -- people who can't break the tie and who hang in there out of hope that this time, he will change.)

An interesting topic, but one that leads to the next question: If we accept the idea that these kids can't be changed, whatever do we do with them??

Symptoms of RAD in Children
∑ Superficially charming and engaging, particularly around strangers or those who they feel they can manipulate
∑ Indiscriminate affection, often to strangers; but not affectionate on parentís terms
∑ Problems making eye contact, except when angry or lying
∑ A severe need to control everything and everyone; worsens as the child gets older
∑ Hypervigilant
∑ Hyperactive, yet lazy in performing tasks
∑ Argumentative, often over silly or insignificant things
∑ Frequent tantrums or rage, often over trivial issues
Demanding or clingy, often at inappropriate times
∑ Trouble understanding cause and effect
∑ Poor impulse control
∑ Lacks morals, values, and spiritual faith
∑ Little or no empathy; often have not developed a conscience
∑ Cruelty to animals
∑ Lying for no apparent reason
∑ False allegations of abuse
∑ Destructive to property or self
∑ Stealing
∑ Constant chatter; nonsense questions
∑ Abnormal speech patterns; uninterested in learning communication skills
∑ Developmental / Learning delays
∑ Fascination with fire, blood and gore, weapons, evil; will usually make the bad choice
∑ Problems with food; either hoarding it or refusing to eat
∑ Concerned with details, but ignoring the main issues
∑ Few or no long term friends; tend to be loners
∑ Attitude of entitlement and self-importance
∑ Sneaks things without permission even if he could have had them by asking
∑ Triangulation of adults; pitting one against the other
A darkness behind the eyes when raging

Symptoms of RAD in Adults
∑ Avoidant
o Unreasonable or inappropriate anger
o Hostile
o Overcritical of others and self
o Intolerant of rules and authority
o Lack of empathy or remorse
o Views others as untrustworthy and unreliable
o Shallow/Vain
o Feelings of self-importance
o Feelings of entitlement or arrogance
o Self-reliance; prefers to work alone than with others
o Views relationships as threatening, or not worth the effort
o May be a workaholic, as a way of avoiding relationships
o Feelings of being unique
o Grandiose or unrealistic fantasies
∑ Anxious/Ambivalent
o Compulsive caregiving
o Feels underappreciated
o Many short-term relationships
o Idealizes others
o Possessive; makes unrealistic demands of partners in relationships
o Preoccupied with relationships, and easily makes declarations of affection
o Obtains feelings of security through relationships
o Sees relationships as imbalanced
o Oversensitive to rejection, easily gives in to jealousy
o Sees others as being difficult to understand
o Unable to understand the concept of altruism
Extreme emotions
∑ May Also Include

o Prone to depression
o Socially inappropriate behavior
o Impulsive
o Manipulative
o Risk-taking
o Self-mutilating behavior
o Often do not remember much of childhood experiences
o Darkness behind the eyes when angered
o At risk of abusing their own children
Children with RAD may become adults diagnosed with sociopathic, narcissistic, antisocial, or borderline disorder

I am new here and wanted to introduce myself. I am the daughter of a Dx Psychopath (which has been an interesting life) and the Mother of an 8 year old adopted daughter (placed at the age of 5) who is RAD--Reactive Attachment Disorder!

I found this site and thread on a search because I run a forum for parents who adopt special needs children from the Foster Care System and RAD is one of the hot topics which tends to lead to many debates. I am very interested in learning as much as I can so I can help my own daughter and others.

I myself find the simular critiria to be very interesting and would love feedback.

As soon as I get my DSL sorted I would love to correspond with you about this topic. In the meantime perhaps you could go over my earlier posts to get some background into my situation and the research I have done over the past few years.

You may be interested to check out Dr Essi Viding who I recently had a meeting with. I will post the info she gave me as soon as I can. There are some links to her research in that section of this forum too. Justaman recently added those links to one of his posts.

The description of your son sounds remarkably like our daughter, N, who is a classic sociopath. She is 20 years old and has recently left our home (although she tells everyone that we kicked her out). Your advice is very much appreciated. I wish I had these insights a few years earlier. When N lived with us, it was like we were waiting for a bomb to go off. The tension and anxiety level were incredible and no one in the family (including her) was happy. She has been in one type of therapy or another for the last 10 years. She was institutionalized three times last year (the final episode was not voluntary).

It has been a real relief to not have to deal with N. For our own benefit, we have pretty much broken off all communication with her. She called on Mother's Day to wish my wife a happy one (my wife refused to talk with her, so N left a phony message on her cell phone). My wife has handled this much better than me. I have had a very difficult time accepting the fact that our daughter has ASPD - not rationally, but emotionally. The hardest thing for me is to forget that I love and care about her (as you put it, disassociate myself from love for her). I realize that any further contact with this person I never knew would probably do more harm than good. She is such a parasite (I used to call her an emotional vampire)! Now that she realizes that can't get anything else from us, she'll forget about us, if she hasn't already.

Advice from interested observers (including our psychiatrist) is to avoid her at all costs. I understand that this is the best thing for all of us, but I canít help feeling sad that Iíll probably never see or speak to her again. Iím sure I will come to my senses eventually. Iíll close by saying that itís comforting to see that there is a family with the strength and fortitude to deal with this situation the right way. I hope we can follow your example.

HiYessssssssssssssss......Finally ( I found this topic!!)This is what I ment when I told in another topic about what we call in dutch; The bottumless well syndrom... It's what you people call RAD in english.hhwhwahwh now I see the word it's plane logic.

When I send my son away from my house. Somebody showed me a news paper..this was 3 weeks after my son has left. On the newspaper there was this cry from a mother; 'My son emotionelly killed me!'I read what she was saying and recognized some things. To be honest; I wished my son was like that! I contacted the people from the organisation and they asked me that same conversation to be a contact person for my part of the country for there wasn't anybody yet here.. I refused. Just got my diagnozes, just got some peace now he was no longer living with me. Just over a month after that he came in my house, uninvided and broke everything he could get his hands on because I didn't want to do what he ordered me. My phones, television, stereo, tables, lights, broke windows and put holes in my doors,ruined my plants, everything he could put his hands on was beaten and thrown against walls. He try to frighten me saying he would kill me if I didn't get in the car with him and his ( very agressive) father immediatly. I refused.After he was gone I asked some neighbours if I could use their phone and call the police. The police was there very soon after and told me to flee. I refused again. I knew my son would find me so there was no point in going anywhere. On top of it all, I had a younger son who was living with his father ( another father) and he wants to come home every weekend.I called the organisation again and said I would do the job. If I still would have to deal with his kind of person, oke..but only in MY way and not being supressed by him. If I had to live my life that way , than as possitive as I could possibly make it.

Within a week I got 29 parents( both fathers and mothers) who want to come to talk to each other. ( surpisingly because there was nothing in newspapers and so on yet!) Now I got a nice house but no room for 58 people so I rent a space somewere else and we came together.

I learned a lot from this meetings. I did this work for over a year, put everything in order, rent a school every 2 weeks for meetings. invited people for the next year to tell something about this disorder. psychologist and so on, people who worked with difficult children. I put the financial part in order and than handed over the work to another, nice woman. I want to foccus on healing and living!I realized then that I was under the influence of terrible people for all my live and want to see if there was anything else in live than trouble..( there is!!!)

Anyway... I learned about a child psychiatrist who is in Belgium. His name is prof. Adrieaanssen ( University of Leuven)if I remember correctly he found that IF those children could learn anything, it has to be without a chance to attache. So; he brought some children in a boarding situation. They lived in a group for 3 weeks. With people who took care of them and who gave them strickt rules. After 3 weeks the childen where moved to another place. They lived there with the same set of rules but with different people to take care of them. After 3 weeks the children moved on again.

He found that these children have the capabillity to learn 'acceptable' behavior but only when they don't see anything else and the caretakers are very firm and always change so children can't get to know them close..

The children where not able to get familliar with the envirronment, the people and the habits in a place. before they could, they moved to another place and even another building in another city.

if I could put this in dutch I would find discribing this a lot easier .....( LOL)

I think about another event now. After I was the contact person for little over a month I had to travel to the other site of the country ( nearby for peope in the USA, for us this is far!!)I could stay with the woman who organisted the whole thing and we had a big meeting. She now showed me the pictures of her children...She had a daughter and a son. The son was the RAD. they where both grown ups at that time. I seem to notice something and couldn't say what... It didn't get clear at that time what I thought I was looking at. So I asked the people from my meetings to bring babypicures from all of they're children. I took pictures I had of my 2 sons. I studied them at home but still couldn't put 'my finger on it'...

On the next meeting we put all pictures next to the other and I took time to just look... I took some pictures out that gave me the creeps and left others to rest...While the group had they're meeting I was in another room just watching the pictures. The feeling didn't leaf me... but still I wasn't able to point out what I felt was wrong.

Finally I saw something but still wasn't sure.I look at all the pictures now and compared them..I took some out again..diffrent ones and studied them again and again... I was very tiered already but I had to know what it was i was loooking at. It was something about the way the body was held.. I took osme pictures that were oke in my eyes and some that weren't. I took them to the other people of the meeting and showed them and asked them what it was we were looking at. Could they pick the pictures of the normal children and the children who have this syndrom? And yes they could..and all without one mistake!

Now what we seem to have found was that when babies are around 3 months they lay on there back in a certain way.... mostly there legs are held high and they move there arms, they will have turned there heads toward the person who is making the picture. These children we are talking about don't... The lay down like a grown up. Straight legs and arm resting on the table....

We found a proffesor in holland who was doing some studies on babis in the whomb. With echo ( I hope you know what I mean with echo) he seem to have found that even in the whomb these children can be recognized by how they pose they'r body.

(I can try to make 'echo' clear; It's a test forinstance with pregnant women. They make the child visible with ultra sound.)

I wond if anyone her knows something about these things.Iam sorry that I an;t tell what happend after this with our findings because I stopped the work. If needed I could contact the lady of the organization agan and aske her about it..Please let me know if you are interessted.

Sorry if not everything I write is very clear. This is not my own language and sometimes I can't express my self in the way I like. If I have to make things more clear than please say so , I will try to tell it in a diffrent way than, hoping it will be more clear,no problem!Segaya

I am extremely interested in what you have written and would like to discuss it further. I would like to do some research about what you said before I do to see if I can get some background to this topic.

RAD is a term which seems to be used for a wide variety of behavioural disorders and the psychologist I saw is very wary about using it as it doesn't apply in many cases and hides another possible diagnosis.

For some parents a RAD diagnosis gives them comfort that they think they can do something to help the child -which can be false hope. For them giving a condition a name gives them a starting point to look for information.

RAD is often diagnosed in adopted children and lack of attachement gets the blame. There is another theory on this which I find more credible with my partner's kid. RAD was mentioned when we looked for answers but we moved on from that.

We call the ultrs sound a scan so I know exactly what you are talking about.

hi again...I found the phone numbers of several people from that oganization and spoke to them all.. I was very surprised that I heard that no follow up came after our findings with the pictures...grgrgrgrgr. I stopped that work so I trusted they would do it...Anyway I will try to search for information about this proffesor that did research to the babies.You will hear from me again.Segaya